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Columbus Iselin, WHOI’s second director

Columbus O’Donnell Iselin, on the WHOI dock in about 1964, with WHOI’s original building, the cupola-topped Bigelow Lab, in the background. Iselin served as WHOI’s second director, from 1940 to 1950, following the Institution’s founding director Henry Bigelow. Bigelow’s student at Harvard, Iselin came to WHOI to captain WHOI’s first research ship Atlantis and was chief scientist collecting physical oceanography data on trans-Atlantic cruises. Iselin was awarded the prestigious Henry Bryant Bigelow Medal in Oceanography in 1966.
(Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)